Tour of the Unknown Coast

Chris has been making noise about riding the Tour of the Unknown Coast (TUC). Chris rode TUC in 2010. We also visited the area in 2009 and 2011. So we're familiar with this cycling route. It's a ‘century’ ride (100 miles) in Humboldt County, CA, 200 miles north of San Francisco. Humboldt County is redwood tree central. It includes Redwood National and State Parks. In fact, the TUC rides along the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. Really big trees up close. Pretty cool. 

TUC bills itself as “California’s Toughest Century”. But many cycling events refer to themselves as the biggest or baddest or toughest or meanest. There's the Markleeville Death Ride, the Hell’s Gate Hundred, the Julian Death March, the Breathless Agony Ride, and the Hungry Buzzard Century, just to name a few. So many ways to suffer on a bike, so little time.

I'm not sure why TUC considers itself The Toughest, but it's not because it has the most climbing (which, at 9,400 feet, it doesn’t). It might be because of the 10 or so miles of mammoth climbs that await riders toward the end of the ride. Contrary to its name, most of TUC’s route is inland. This is probably because most of the coastline (also referred as the Lost Coast) is inaccessible. Finally escaping the inland route after 75 miles of pedaling, you descend to the coast itself, then ride 10 miles along the coast before heading back inland over what has been dubbed The Wall. The Wall is a one mile climb with an 18-22% grade. That is the kind of steep where if you don't peddle, you fall over. Once you've crested The Wall, there are 8 more miles of very tough climbing through a section called the Endless Hills. You get the picture.

When Chris rode TUC in 2010 he had a minor catastrophe due to a mechanical problem. Minutes before the 7am start time he was putting on his seat stem and the bolt that holds the stem onto the bike sheared off. He had extra bolts in his car (this had happened before; but that's another story) but the sheared bolt was firmly ensconced in the stem. So he threw his bike in the car, drove to town, found a hardware store and waited until the store opened at 8am. Luckily the guy showed up a little early. Chris begged his way in and was able to borrow a drill to extract the broken bolt.

By the time he got back to the start of the ride he was about an hour and a half behind everyone else. This is significant because of the energy efficiencies you get from drafting behind other riders, not to mention the psychological benefit of having other riders around on very long rides. After passing many stragglers, with great effort he did eventually catch up to the tail end of a group of riders about 4 hours into the ride. This group happened to be from Rapha, a high-end cycling clothing manufacturer that sells absurdly expensive cycling clothes. Rapha sends its cycling "team" to events for promotional purposes. They bring along a professional photographer. After Chris caught up to the Rapha guys he hung onto them like gum on a shoe. He stuck so close, in fact, that he ended up in some of Rapha's photos. So now Chris is immortalized in Rapha's marketing materials. Below are some Rapha pictures. We grabbed these off Rapha's website. Then Chris added comments to the first photo. Can you guess which rider he is?:

Rapha photo, 2010 Tour of Unknown Coast

Rapha photo; 2010 Tour of the Unknown Coast; Chris is the last rider

I guess because it was so much fun the first time Chris wants to go back and ride it again this year. The ride is May 5th. I suppose I'll go too, weather permitting. Growing the tallest trees in the world requires lots of rain, so the weather could certainly put the cabash on things. If we go, Chris will ride the century while I ride something less than that. The TUC offers a '100k' option (sometimes referred to as a metric century), which in this case is 62 miles. The problem with this option is that it goes just 30 miles before turning around and heading back the same way. And with the exception of Avenue of the Giants, the first 30 miles of TUC is pretty dull. You really don't start get to the good stuff until after that. So instead, what I will probably do is follow the 100 mile route until I get to the coast. This would be equivalent to about 75 miles, so only a few more miles than their 100k option, and much more scenic. Chris will have finished his ride before I get to the coast, and he'll bring the car around and pick me up. Yes, I would stop short of The Wall but, who am I, Lance Armstrong? We're also thinking that maybe Chris will drop me off in the morning about 15 miles from the start to get me past some of the boring section, with the added bonus that I'll have more energy to ride further out. Then he would race back in the car to get to the official start line by 7am. Because it wouldn't be TUC for him without early morning drama. We are scheming about the possibilities. More later.

Lost Coast Cow

http://tuccycle.org/